State-run primary schools lagging, but all is not lost

Amaninder Pal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 5

The Annual Status of Education Report-2015, released recently, has painted a grim picture of the standard of education in state-run primary schools, but it has also witnessed some improvement.

Sample this: In Class III, only 40 per cent students can read Punjabi text of Class-II level, while 56.6 per cent can solve subtraction problems. In Class IV, around 22 per cent students can recognise numerals between 10 and 99 but don’t know how to subtract.

In Class II, there are only 25 per cent kids who are able to read Punjabi text of Class-I level. In the same class, there are about 23 per cent students who can’t recognise numeral figures higher than 9.

On the bright side, the report observes that the gap in reading levels of Class-III students of private and government schools has decreased. In 2014, around 41 per cent of the government school students of this class could read Class-I level text, compared to over 62 per cent in private schools. However, in 2015, the gap was reduced to less than five per cent. In arithmetic, less than 40% students of government primary schools could solve division problems in 2014, compared to around 60 per cent in private schools. Last year, this gap was less than two per cent.

Prepared after visiting 11,840 households in 593 villages of 20 districts, the report is primarily aimed at assessing students’ skill level in reading and solving basic mathematical problems such as subtraction and division and the identification of numerals.

The report observed that “there still remains a large scope for improvement in basic reading levels in primary schools in Punjab.” However, it has termed the improvement on the arithmetic front “significant.”